This was that great Mahmoud the Gaznevide, who was the first Mohammedan conqueror that entered India, and the first who dropt the title of Malek and assumed that of Sultan in its stead. He it was, who after having broken to pieces with his own hands the gigantic idol of Soumenat, put to death fifty thousand of its worshippers, as a further proof of his holy Mohammedan indignation. In the last days of his life, when a mortal disease was consuming him, and he himself knew that no human means could arrest its course, he ordered all his costliest apparel, and his vessels of silver and gold, and his pearls and precious stones, the inestimable spoils of the East, to be displayed before him,—the latter were so numerous that they were arranged in separate cabinets according to their colour and size. It was in the royal residence which he had built for himself in Gazna, and which he called the Palace of Felicity, that he took from this display, wherewith he had formerly gratified the pride of his eye, a mournful lesson; and in the then heartfelt conviction that all is vanity, he wept like a child. “What toils,” said he, “what dangers, what fatigues of body and mind have I endured for the sake of acquiring these treasures, and what cares in preserving them, and now I am about to die and leave them!” In this same palace he was interred, and there it was that his unhappy ghost, a century afterwards, was believed to wander. CHAPTER XCIX. A COUNTRY PARISH. SOME WHOLESOME EXTRACTS, SOME TRUE ANECDOTES, AND SOME USEFUL HINTS, WHICH WILL NOT BE TAKEN BY THOSE WHO NEED THEM MOST. _Non è inconveniente, che delle cose delettabili alcune ne sieno utili, cosi come dell' utili molte ne sono delettabili, et in tutte due alcune si truovano honeste._ LEONE MEDICO (HEBREO.) Mr. Bacon's parsonage was as humble a dwelling in all respects as the cottage in which his friend Daniel was born. A best kitchen was its best room, and in its furniture an Observantine Friar would have seen nothing that he could have condemned as superfluous. His college and later school books, with a few volumes which had been presented to him by the more grateful of his pupils, composed his scanty library: they were either books of needful reference, or such as upon every fresh perusal might afford new delight. But he had obtained the use of the Church Library at Doncaster, by a payment of twenty shillings, according to the terms of the foundation. Folios from that collection might be kept three months, smaller volumes, one or two, according to their size; and as there were many works in it of solid contents as well as sterling value, he was in no such want of intellectual food, as too many of his brethren are, even at this time. How much good might have been done, and how much evil might probably have been prevented, if Dr. Bray's design for the formation of parochial libraries had been every where carried into effect!